Speaker addresses Matthew 5:38-48, resolving the tension between loving private enemies and defending against public threats that endanger livelihoods or families. He argues systematic theology reveals no biblical paradox, distinguishing ego insults from attacks requiring proportional justice by civil magistrates. Critiquing modern evangelicalism for conflating grace and law, he links misinterpreting "turning the other cheek" to societal failures like border invasions. Ultimately, listeners must discern between offenses hurting pride, which demand mercy, and survival threats necessitating defense while praying for enemies. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Why We Leave Five Star Reviews00:08:56
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When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds.
You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
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We've got several hundred reviews so far, but we'd like to reach a thousand reviews by the end of this year.
The year of our Lord 2024.
If you haven't left a review yet, take a moment and help us achieve our goal.
Amen.
Please join me in standing for the reading of God's Word.
Our text for today, finishing out the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, is Matthew 5, verses 38 through 48.
Matthew 5, verses 38 through 48.
I'll read our text in its entirety.
When I finish reading the text, I'm going to say, This is the Word of the Lord, at which point I would appreciate very much if you would join me in saying, Thanks be to God.
One final time, our text for today is Matthew 5, verses 38 through 48.
The Bible says this You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.
But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil.
But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.
And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.
Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbors and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?
Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?
Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father.
Is perfect.
This is the word of the Lord.
All right, please be seated.
Let's go ahead and dive in.
And our call to worship, as we were looking through the Psalms, we've been choosing, selecting a particular passage in the book of Psalms each Lord's Day to use as our prayer of ascent, our call to worship in the beginning of our liturgy.
And because we've been working through the Psalms, as you've already heard me say, many of the passages throughout the Psalms deal with the reality of enemies.
And yet, we have clearly in our text today, Matthew chapter 5, verses 38 through 48, the memorable words of Jesus and what he says to all his disciples and how they should regard their enemies.
And so, there are what we might call an apparent paradox or what is a seemingly contradiction in the Word of God.
Now, within the Word of God, we know that we have no real contradiction, we have no real paradox, because the Bible has been written by 40 different human authors.
Over the course of 1500 years, a collection of 66 books.
But at the 30,000 foot view, we can all agree that the Bible really has only one author in the divine sense that God wrote the Bible.
He wrote the Bible, the Holy Spirit inspiring men.
And so the Bible, each of these books, contains different genres and different elements of the human characteristics and personalities of the men who wrote the Bible.
But because the Holy Spirit is the one in the divine sense who inspired every biblical text, We know that the Holy Spirit did not allow for any real contradiction.
So, what do you do with text in the Old Testament, in the Psalms, where David says things like this Do I not hate those who hate you?
And David doesn't merely say that he hates evil or hates wicked in an abstract way.
He doesn't merely say, I hate feminism.
But David would say, No, I hate feminists.
David would not just say, I hate Marxism.
He would say, No, I hate Marxists.
That there actually is something to hating not only ideology or pernicious false religions or certain sins, but actually hating those who perpetuate and commit those sins, especially anyone who attempts others to join them in sin.
We see the scripture that talks about if anyone would lead a little child astray, That it would be better for him to tie a millstone around his neck and be cast into the ocean.
Jesus has very harsh and strong words, not just towards entities, not just towards impersonalized, abstract ideas and evil, but towards people.
People who perpetuate evil, people who deceive others into joining them in evil.
And we see this throughout the scripture, time and time again, especially in.
In the book of Psalms.
But we also find our text today where Jesus tells us to love our enemies.
He tells us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.
And so, as we seek as Christians to obey the words of Jesus and to have a whole biblical theology and to not do a weird isegesis where we're reading things into the text and then also in a selective manner.
Ripping certain passages of Scripture out of their larger context in order to assemble them together and to make for ourselves, fashion for ourselves, doctrines that would meet our own personal fancies.
We don't want to do that.
We want to have a whole biblical theology.
I said last week we want to seek to not be biblicist.
And one of the ways to not be biblicist in a negative sense is to have an all encompassing biblical theology.
Systematic theology is important.
There are many who have criticized systematic theology, saying, well, that's man imposing a man made system on the Word of God.
When the reality is that precisely the opposite is actually true.
What we're seeking to do instead is you're actually seeking to look through the Word of God and you're assuming that if the Bible actually does have one divine author, 40 human authors, but inspired by one divine author,
and if this author is the Holy Spirit, who is God, And if the Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever, behold, I changeth not, then we would be right to assume that God would have some sort of system without contradiction in understanding his word.
So, systematic theology is not imposing on the word of God the systems of men, but rather assuming that God himself has a system, a way of thinking, as it were, that is consistent and not in contradiction with himself.
And that if we read the Word of God in its entirety, and we do so carefully, that we should be able to draw out of the Word of God, not inputting, not exegeting, but exegeting out of the Word of God, a systematic way of thinking, a systematic theology.
And the reality is that the Bible is complex.
It is not in contradiction, but it is complex.
On the one hand, we have David saying, Do I not hate those who hate you?
Remember, brothers and sisters, just as a quick example, God will not be punishing for eternity in hell sin, but he will be punishing for eternity in hell sinners.
It is not the abstract spirit of lust that will suffer in hell for eternity.
It is not murder that will be suffering in hell.
It is murderers that will suffer in hell.
God Punishes Sinners, Not Sins00:06:19
It's people.
It is people, not just sin, but sinners who God will punish in hell, those who refused the only salvation that can be found, the only grace to be found, which is in the Lord Jesus Christ through faith.
And so David says, Do I not hate those who hate you?
Not just the sins, but the sinners.
And yet Jesus says, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
He also talks in our text today about turning the other cheek, that if you are asked for your tunic, to give your cloak as well.
And if you are asked to go one mile, to go a second mile in addition.
So, theologians, systematic theologians, and throughout church history have Sought to reconcile these ideas of the Christian having enemies in a godly fashion, at times even hating our enemies, and yet also reconciling that with the words of Jesus to pray for our enemies, love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us and being willing to turn the other cheek.
Historically, throughout church history, systematic theologians, one of the ways they've reconciled what appears to be two contradicting ideas is by bifurcating enemies into two categories private enemies and public enemies.
Private enemies and public enemies.
I'm going to be utilizing Matthew Henry and his commentary in our text today, and then I'll seek to explain a little bit more of the distinction between a private enemy and a public enemy.
Matthew Henry, on our text today, he says this In case of injury, it was a command that everyone should of necessity require such satisfaction.
That is, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.
It's one of the things that's mentioned in our text today.
In all which places it is appointed to be done by the magistrate, not personally, not as vigilantes, but by the civil magistrate, those who have been appointed to deal out justice in this life, who bears not the sword in vain, but he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath.
We find that in Romans chapter 13, verse 4.
It was a direction to the judges of Israel what punishment to inflict.
In cases of maims, maiming, for terror to such as would do mischief on the one hand, and for a restraint to such that would have mischief done to them on the other hand, that they may not insist on a greater punishment than is proper.
It is not life for eye, nor limb for tooth, but observe rather a proportion.
So, what Matthew Henry is saying is that.
One of the things that we find first before getting to the words of Jesus in Matthew 5 38 through 48, Jesus, when he says, You have heard it said, he's referencing Old Testament scripture.
But what Jesus is saying, he's not going against the law of Moses.
The law of God is immutable, meaning that it doesn't change, it's perfect.
God doesn't say this is just in 1500 BC, but it's no longer just in 2024.
God's sense of justice is.
Doesn't fluctuate.
It doesn't change with the culture.
It doesn't change with popular opinion.
So Jesus is not saying, you have heard it said, tooth for tooth, eye for eye.
And that's something that God did say, and it was good for a time, but it's no longer good today.
That's not what Jesus is insinuating.
What Jesus does all throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, when he refers back to the law of God, you have heard it was said, is he's appealing back to Moses, Moses as a prophet delivering to Israel the immutable and infallible law of God.
And then what Jesus is doing when he says, But I tell you, What he's saying is he's expounding upon the law of God.
He's executing the law of God, and he's giving, he's not replacing the law of God as though it's flawed and needs to be improved.
But what he's doing is he's expounding and clarifying the law of God, getting back to the original meaning that God had in the first place.
You've heard me say this many times.
I'll say it again because it bears a reminder throughout this series, throughout the Sermon on the Mount.
What happened is that God gave the law to Moses, Moses gave the law to Israel, and it was good and holy and right.
But then what happened is that Jewish teachers throughout the history of Israel, they came and took the law of God and they perverted it.
So when Jesus comes and he says, You have heard it was said, but I tell you, he's not saying God spoke through Moses in the Old Testament and God was wrong.
But I tell you, no.
He's also not saying God spoke through Moses and it was right for that time, but it's no longer applicable today.
No.
He's saying, Here's the law.
The law of God spoken through Moses is holy and perfect and right.
It's immutable, that means unchanging.
It is infallible, that means it does not err.
But this law has been perverted by your religious rulers in your day.
And their commentary on the law of God ultimately undoes the law of God.
And so I'm going now to provide God's commentary on God's law.
I, Jesus Christ, who am God, am going to give you God's meaning.
God's interpretation of God's law.
I'm going to not replace Moses, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to dust off the law of Moses, which is God's law, and get rid of all the perversions and all the abstractions and all the twistings that your religious rulers have done throughout the centuries and get back to what Moses meant, aka what God meant, aka what I meant, I being not Joel, but Jesus.
Jesus Clarifies God's Law00:10:29
That's what's going on.
And one of the things, according to Matthew Henry and commentating on our text today, one of the things that Jesus was saying is he was not saying eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
You've heard it said long ago, but I say love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Jesus is not saying that there should be no civil magistrate.
Jesus is not saying, to give another example, that there should be a civil magistrate, but that the civil magistrate should be merciful.
No, Jesus is saying that private individual disciples of him, of Jesus, Christians, as individuals, that we should be merciful.
As individuals, so this is the distinction between private and public enemies, one of the distinctions, one way of bearing it out.
As individuals, Christian individuals, disciples of Jesus, we should be marked by mercy.
But in a public, corporate sense, the civil magistrate should not be known for mercy.
You've heard it said, if you want mercy, go to church.
And that's a good saying.
The sentiment, the general sentiment there is true.
If you're looking for forgiveness, you're looking for mercy, go to church.
Unless, of course, you're looking for forgiveness when it comes to holding a different view of World War II.
Then you need to be very, very particular which church you go and look for that forgiveness in.
But in general, it's been said, and yes, that was a fair quip.
And there will be more in the future.
So, that being said, It has been generally said of churches.
Today, you have to be very particular which one you pick.
But in general, churches have been known for mercy.
And so the old saying has been true if you're looking for mercy, go to church.
Where should you not look for mercy?
From the civil magistrate, the one who God ordained to bear the sword to deal out justice.
Again, we have to think in categories.
We have to think systematically.
We have to think private and public, individual and groups, corporate, and also in terms of spheres.
Church, Versus state.
The civil magistrate has not been ordained by God for a ministry of mercy.
The civil magistrate, that's not its function.
That's not its purpose.
So when Jesus says, You have heard it was said, this is what he's contradicting.
Because he says, On the one hand, you've heard it said, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
So is Jesus going against Moses?
Or is Jesus saying to Israel, in terms of their civil magistrate, that they shouldn't?
Uphold justice, proportional justice for crimes anymore?
That now people can commit crimes with impunity?
You can go around maiming your neighbor.
You can chop off his limb, or you can gouge out his eye, or you can knock out his tooth, and according to Jesus, a civil magistrate shouldn't do a darn thing about it?
Of course, that's not what Jesus is saying.
No, what Jesus is saying, you have heard it said eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but I tell you, what he's contradicting is not Moses.
What is implied in the text here.
Is that he is contradicting the explanation and exegesis and commentaries of the Jewish religious leaders of his day on Moses?
What they were doing, the religious rulers in Jesus' day in Israel, is they were taking the law of Moses and saying that private citizens can carry it out themselves.
And that's where Jesus is disagreeing.
No, no, no.
I say to you, private citizens, individual disciples of Jesus, Individual Christians, as individual Christians and as households, as my disciples, you don't go and retrieve an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth.
But instead, you as Christians, you show mercy.
And the first place you show mercy is privately behind closed doors in your prayer life by praying for those who persecute you.
See, Jesus, what he's contradicting is not Moses, he's contradicting the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the religious.
Rulers of his day who had taken Moses and applied what was meant to be carried out by the state, applied that to the individual.
They had begun because they were not compassionate men.
They were men who very much were out for blood.
Well, how do you know that the Pharisees were out for blood?
Well, Jesus.
They held a mock trial in the middle of the night, produced false witnesses, and with glee and joy watched Jesus' back be ripped apart with a cat of nine tails.
And it wasn't enough for them.
They needed more.
Some people want a pound of flesh.
But the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the religious Jewish leaders of that day, they wanted every inch of Christ's flesh to be ripped apart.
Forty lashes minus the one where Jesus can barely breathe and is barely conscious, that's not enough.
Crown of thorns, more.
That's not enough either.
Nails through his hands, do it now.
Rip him apart.
They loved it.
They loved it.
The religious rulers of Jesus' day, they watched him ripped apart with joy and gladness.
They hated him.
They hated him.
You must know that.
They hated him.
And so Jesus disagrees with them again and again and again in his ministry because they had perverted his law, they had kept all his sheep, his true sheep, From even having a chance at coming to him.
They had taken the truth of God and hidden it in a way, sealed it and covered it, twisted it, perverted it, to where even those who would want to come, they could not come.
And Jesus says this explicitly.
This doesn't mean making things up.
Jesus says that you go halfway around the world to make a proselyte, that is a convert.
And when you do, you make him twice the son of hell that you are.
And not only will you not enter in through the door, but you also hold all those hostage so that they can't enter either.
You wicked and rebellious generation.
Jesus is not, this is the fundamental mistake that evangelicals make when they read the Sermon on the Mount.
They think that Jesus is pitting up against one another grace versus law.
And that Jesus, when he says, I say to you, it's gospel.
You have heard it said long ago, Moses, it's law.
And evangelicals have taken that one principle over the last, I would argue, 70, 80, 90 years.
And said, This is for sure what's going on in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.
And then taken that rubric and made it the lens for reading the entire Bible.
And that mistake right there, there are many others that we could reference, many other mistakes of evangelicals, but that single mistake right there has ruined the entire world.
The entire world has been destroyed.
If you wonder, how did we get transgenderism?
That mistake.
How did we get globalism and a full blown invasion at our southern border?
That mistake.
The conflation of private enemies versus public enemies, and all that rooted ultimately in the conflation of the notion, the false notion, that Jesus is somehow against the law of God.
And you see people do this all the time.
They'll draw even larger theological perversions out of that, and they'll say that somehow the Son and the Father are at odds with one another.
You know, you've got God the Father in the Old Testament, but man, He sure is a stickler for the rules.
But luckily, we have Jesus, and Jesus comes in, and who does Jesus save us from?
Well, He saves us from His dad.
Now, theologically, there's a bit of a divine irony there because that's true.
Jesus does save us from not just His dad, but Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Jesus saves us from God, the Godhead, the triune God.
He saves us from God.
Why do we need to be saved?
From God, because God is just and He must punish wickedness.
And you, brothers and sisters, are wicked.
So we did need to be saved from God.
But we needed to be saved from God not because God was a bully or dealing out retribution unjustly.
No, we needed to be saved from God because we declared war on God by virtue of our sin.
And Jesus pays that penalty for our sins so that we can be reconciled with God and reconciled to our fellow man.
But that's one of the big mistakes that we see in evangelicalism and in Christianity, even more broadly, beyond just evangelicalism, is this idea that the Son is against the Father, that the gospel is against the law, that the New Testament is against the Old Testament.
This is not how we do biblical theology.
This is not, brothers and sisters, how to read the Bible.
Jesus is not arguing with Moses.
Jesus and Moses agree.
And we know this from other texts.
If we pan out, And we don't just do the biblicalist approach and pan out, look at a whole biblical theology and a whole systematic theology.
What does Jesus say?
He says, I tell you the truth, heaven and earth will pass away before one jot or one tittle of the law of God.
And he even says, all the law of God passes away.
Calling the Pastor and Cops00:06:18
Meaning that the law of Moses is just as good today as the day that it was written.
That God has not changed.
God is not a man that he should lie.
God is not a man that he should change.
His mind.
He is the same today as he was back then and as he always will be.
Justice, the measure, the standard for right and wrong, for morality, does not fluctuate based off of culture or time or place or popular opinion.
And yet, many people think it does.
And many Christians think it does.
Many Christians today.
I'll give you an example.
This one I don't talk about often because I don't want to be overly divisive and I don't.
Hold a strong, you must do this.
You guys know this about me if you've been a part of the church for any period of time at all, but it's a good example.
Head coverings.
Head coverings.
You will hear pastors today that will say, well, head coverings might be biblical, but because it's 2024 in America, it's just not worth it.
It's viewed as just too countercultural.
It's visible, it's right there, it's in your face, and visitors might think that.
We're Amish, you know, or whatever, and, you know, and it's just too much, you know, and we just can't do it.
And that's that.
Some ministers of the gospel have even gone to the point of encouraging wives to disobey their husbands.
It has been recently expressly said that if your husband has a conviction that 1 Corinthians 11 still applies to the church today, And encourages his wife on that basis to wear a head covering in Lord's Day worship, but the pastor of the church doesn't think that head coverings are a thing, then the wife should rebel against her husband and side with the pastor and said.
That was just said about a week and a half ago.
It's wicked.
It's wicked to tear apart families and marriages, to encourage women.
To turn against their husbands, to choose their pastors over the husband who made vows with them?
No.
Again, we have to be able to think in categories.
I've noticed, you know, there are also people who say, well, how come your standard when it comes to men in your church, how come you just don't lay down the law and say, here's a reading list of all the books that are banned at Covenant Bible Church.
You're not allowed to read this.
But aren't you the same guy?
Who a couple years ago said that you didn't want your wife to read a book?
Correct.
Categories, brothers and sisters.
That was my point all the way back when I made the statement about Megan reading the book.
What did I say?
I said, a man in his home as a husband has far more authority than a man behind a pulpit in a church.
That was the whole context that was convenient, of course, left out in that clip, as I always get clipped.
But the point was civil magistrate, there's one sphere.
Authority over lots of people.
It's a mile wide, but really only an inch deep.
Right?
If Joe Biden comes and says, hey, we want this and we want that, you can say, hey, thanks so much, take a hike.
No.
Get off my lawn.
No.
No, you don't have jurisdiction over these things.
You have this much authority, an inch of authority, inch deep of authority over a mile wide of citizens.
Little bit of authority over a lot of people.
Now think of that's the civil magistrate, that's now think of the church.
A pastor has a little bit more authority, but over a much smaller group of people 330 million people in the United States, about 200 people in this church.
But then there's another group.
It's a very small, even smaller than a church, very small group of people, only an inch wide, but about a mile deep in terms of the degree of authority, the scope, how many people are under that authority, only a few.
The degree of that authority, a lot.
And that is the household.
A husband and a father.
Now, a husband and a father can still, even there, there is a jurisdiction.
There are lines.
There are limits.
No human authority is an ultimate authority.
And there is a way for a husband, even though he has much authority, he can even take, even there, go beyond and take more authority than even he has been given.
He's been given by God, a husband and a father, a ton of authority in his home.
But even then, he has not been given limitless authority, so he can go beyond it, and that would be an abuse.
And in those cases, a wife does have a right, and we could even argue a moral obligation, to supersede her husband's authority if it is real, serious, especially if it is physical, life threatening abuse.
She should go above his authority and appeal to the other two spheres.
That would be.
Calling the pastor and calling the cops.
If her husband is holding one of the children, and I won't give details, but, and this is a threat, and he's about to do something terrible.
You call the police, you call your pastor, you go above his authority and appeal to another authority.
And the ultimate authority that we're appealing to always is God's authority.
Hurt Versus Harm Explained00:13:55
God's authority.
Of course, you do that.
But if your husband tells you to put a thin piece of cloth on your head, you will not die.
The children aren't in physical danger.
1 Corinthians 11, here's what we know it might command head coverings, it definitely does not forbid head coverings.
And if you want to be popular with the normies because you just don't want to go too far, be too extreme, well, that position I got from R.C. Sproul.
That was literally his argument.
He said, Look, 1 Corinthians 11 is a little wonky because it's talking about for the angels' sake, we should do this and that, and I don't exactly know what that means.
Here's what I do know there's no text in the scripture that says, Thou shalt not wear something on your head if you're a woman on the Lord's day in worship.
But there might be a text in scripture that says, You should.
And so Vesta Sproul, R.C. Sproul's wife, her whole life, still to this day, she's still alive, wears a head covering on Sunday.
And what I've learned in the Reformed world over the last few years is that if Sproul does it, then you're, you know, if Sproul said something, you're allowed to say it too.
So, yeah, so they're talking about appealing to authorities.
Often the Bible is not enough, you have to appeal to some Reformed guy instead.
So I'll appeal to R.C. Sproul.
He said it, so I think I'm allowed to say it.
But here's the point.
The point is, there's all these different appeals to authority.
Have you noticed where one of the things that you'll see in the Gospels again and again is it says they marveled at Jesus when he taught because he spoke as one who spoke with authority?
Have you ever wondered what that meant?
They're not just saying that he had incredible rhetoric, right?
It's not like people who were sitting back, you know, a few hundred years ago listening to the sermons of George Whitefield.
Or, you know, listening to Charles Spurgeon and saying, We marveled at, man, the prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon, we marveled at his preaching because he spoke as one with authority.
That's not what's being said about Jesus when Jesus preached.
They're not saying, the people are not saying, We marveled at Jesus' preaching because he spoke as one who spoke with authority, saying, He's such a good preacher, or He has such good rhetoric, or such good oration, or the way that, you know, it's the passions and the pathos of the preacher that just stir the soul, and people would, that's not what they're saying.
They're saying something very objective and specific when they say Jesus spoke as one with authority.
What they mean is Jesus doesn't cite the rabbis.
Every other Jewish teacher in that day, they would cite Moses and then immediately pivot from Moses to Rabbi so and so.
So they would read Moses that actually was God's law.
And then immediately cover it up with the traditions of men that ultimately perverted God's law.
So they would read the Ten Commandments and say, and of course we all know Rabbi so and so and Rabbi so and so and Rabbi so and so.
They say that when it comes to the Fourth Commandment, what it really means is da da da da.
And by the time they got done, the Fourth Commandment was obliterated.
And the Sixth Commandment would be obliterated.
And the Eighth Commandment would be obliterated to where the law of God was left nowhere to be found at all.
And so, when the people would say of Jesus, he spoke as one who speaks with authority, what they mean is he did not appeal to other men for his credibility.
He would go directly to the law word of God itself, and that would be the only thing he referenced.
You have heard it was said, and they'd expect him to say, You have heard it has been said by Rabbi Stone, but he wouldn't.
He said, You have heard it has been said, Moses, God.
Okay, and now give us the commentary.
Nope, here's my commentary.
There's all these Jewish commentaries on Moses.
I'm bypassing all of them because they're all.
They're all bad.
Here's Moses, pure and unadulterated.
And here is me, Jesus, my commentary on Moses.
And my commentary on Moses does not contradict Moses.
My commentary on Moses contradicts all your religious rulers who have been trying to pervert Moses.
Does that make sense?
And one of the ways, back to our text, eye for eye.
Tooth for tooth?
Jesus says, no, not that.
But instead, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Jesus is not contradicting Moses, who really did say eye for eye and tooth for tooth.
Jesus is not contradicting Moses.
He's contradicting, everyone in the audience knows what he's getting at.
He is contradicting all of the perverted interpretations of Moses and one of the chief perverted interpretations of this particular portion of Moses, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
Is that the Pharisees and Sadducees and religious rulers of that day had said that the individual private person could take retribution into their own hands?
And that's what Jesus is saying.
No, no, no.
As private persons, especially as my followers, disciples, and Christians, we love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
Jesus is not saying, in a public corporate sense, especially with a divinely instituted civil magistrate, That the state should be merciful and say, Oh, you punched out someone's tooth?
That's okay.
Jesus told us to be nice.
Oh, you killed someone?
No death penalty.
That's okay.
Jesus told us to be nice.
Oh, you ripped off somebody's limb?
It's like nobody does that in our culture.
They've done it to 70 million in the womb.
You ripped off somebody's limb?
Well, you know, just a light fine will do.
And certainly not for the mother who made that decision.
Just for the person who was using the forceps.
No, no.
Jesus is not, he is not saying that just retribution is a bad idea.
Jesus is not combating justice.
The whole point of the gospel, brothers and sisters, the whole point of Calvary, the whole point of the cross is it was God's magnificent divine way of somehow being able to administer to you and I. Mercy without contradicting justice.
The cross is where justice is not bypassed, but rather satisfied.
That's the whole point of the gospel.
That's the whole Christian faith.
God didn't break the law for love.
No, God kept the law at the cost of His own Son so that you and I might be welcomed in and experience a love that we don't deserve.
God doesn't contradict justice.
He upholds it.
And he upholds it at the cost of his own son's blood, so that you and I might receive mercy that comes with justice, not at the expense of justice.
And if we've missed that, then it's not just that we've missed general equity theonomy or the Protestant magisterial position or how to do political philosophy.
We've missed the gospel of Jesus Christ, we've missed the entirety of the Christian faith.
Jesus does not burst onto the scene to say, God the Father, bad.
God the Son, good.
Old Testament, bad.
New Testament, good.
Law, bad.
Gospel, good.
Justice, bad.
Grace, good.
No.
Jesus burst on the scene to say, Jewish religious leaders, bad.
True Christian tradition hiding underneath the pile of garbage, good.
And let's get back to it.
And under this tradition, you still all stand condemned.
In fact, Even more condemned because God's law is perfect and holy and right, and it is not manageable by anyone.
But I will die and take that punishment that you deserve upon myself so that you might be reconciled to God.
That's what's going on in the New Testament, that's what's going on in the gospel narratives, that's what's going on in the Sermon on the Mount.
You have heard it was said, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but I tell you, it's time now to be nice.
No.
He's saying, You have heard it was said, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and you know that your own religious rulers have taken that, and the application that they have presented you with is that as private citizens, you can go around exacting justice and retribution from any private enemy who has offended you.
Now, let's go to the turn the other cheek.
Notice, turning the other cheek is very different than turning the other eye or turning the other limb.
Or turning the other tooth.
There's a dynamic difference between hurt and harm.
This is language that my wife and I have always used with our children when we're trying to explain to them spanking.
Because some children have stronger wills than others, and they'll appeal to their own warped, sinful sense of justice.
My children have actually never done this, but, and I won't name the one who has because it's not my right to do so.
But there is a child who has said that when spankings occur, that it must be that his parents don't love him.
And when the parents say, but God, no, we do love you, and God's word tells us to do it, then the child says, well, then God must not love me.
God must be terrible.
No.
No.
One of the verses in the Bible that talks about discipline and particularly corporal punishment in the home with children, a rod, One of the verses literally says that your son, he will not die.
In other words, the whole point of discipline, especially when it comes to spanking, and this is what we tell to our children, is we say, spankings are designed by God to be administered through loving parents for instruction and correction in such a way that physically they hurt but do not harm.
That's the whole point.
That's why, to give a little bit of practical advice here.
When parents ask me about discipline with young children, I recommend something that is thin.
Thin.
And not a paddle that is thick.
Because you want it to sting, but you don't want it to leave lasting harm.
A tooth missing is not just hurt, it's harm.
A limb missing is not just hurt, it's harm.
An eye being gouged out is not just hurt, it's harm.
Now, but what category is a cheek being slapped put into?
See, that's hurt, but not harm.
When Jesus says, turn the other cheek, He's not saying that retribution in the category of justice carried out by the proper authorities, aka the civil magistrate, is now off the table because I'm Jesus and I'm nice and I've gotten rid of justice and the law of Moses.
No, he's talking about private enemies giving something that hurts but not harm.
He's talking about private grievances and offenses and conflicts that cause embarrassment.
So when you have a private enemy who comes and slaps you on the cheek, And this can be metaphorical or literal, but it's a grievance.
It's an insult.
He's embarrassed you.
In those cases, don't exact justice or retribution.
In those cases, do your best, if you can, to overlook the offense.
In fact, you could even turn the other cheek and allow them to commit the offense again.
But in public, with public enemies and public.
Harm, not just hurt, my pride was hurt, my ego was hurt, but no, this is actual harm.
Bodily harm, like missing a limb, or harm to your livelihood.
Like this current attack is from a collective group in a public sphere in such a way that it doesn't just hurt my pride, but if this is successful, I will not be able to provide for my family.
My livelihood.
Someone has lied about your business, for instance, brought a lawsuit against you.
Defending Your Livelihood00:12:44
And your business will go under, and you know it's slander, it's not true.
And you have the ability to defend yourself.
Jesus, brothers and sisters, you have to know this.
Jesus is not saying that your family must starve, you must tie your hands behind your back, allow the false charge to go on, make zero defense.
And allow your personal livelihood, your business, to be sued out of existence.
That is not what Jesus means when he says, turn the other cheek.
Jesus is not saying that Christians, in a corporate sense, insofar as they belong to certain vocations or institutions or the civil magistrate, that Christians, in terms of public enemies, can never levy or offer any kind of defense.
Jesus, in other words, to say it very plainly, Jesus in our text today is not prescribing suicide.
But that is how it has been interpreted by the Christian West over the last 80, 90 years, and this is why we are where we are.
This is why we're losing.
We're not losing because some outside power was stronger than Christendom.
No, the West has fallen and is falling because we shot ourselves in the foot.
No outside power was a real threat.
Not because we're great, but because God was so kind and so gracious towards the West that over centuries, a millennium from King Alfred all the way up until now, God established the Christian West so strongly in the world that no one could take it out except the Christian West.
And one of the tactics of perversion and a twisting of scripture that convinced, created a vulnerability.
In the Christian West and convinced Christians in the West to commit suicide was the twisting of our text today, turn the other cheek.
If the Muslims are invading, you should ship over the Haitians as well.
If the public school is trying to indoctrinate your children, well, then go ahead after 18 years and send them at great financial cost to yourself to a Marxist higher education, a university, to indoctrinate them some more.
That is not what Jesus is saying.
He is saying at the private, personal level, when a friend betrays you, insults you, Hurts your reputation, hurts, but not irrevocable harm, hurts your dignity, hurts, not harm, certainly not ultimate harm, hurts your reputation, your dignity, your ego, as it were, slaps you on the cheek,
then you can afford to exercise grace and turn to Him the other.
But when public enemies, when public enemies, Attack you in such a way that it doesn't just hurt, but it has the potential to do real harm.
That if their attacks that they've levied were to prove to be successful, that you would be unemployable.
What I'm getting at is Jesus is not talking about cancel culture.
When they come to cancel you, let them.
That's not what Jesus is saying.
Now, when they come, that's not hurt to ego.
That is irrevocable harm from people who hate Christ and hate you by proxy and want to ruin you in such a way that it doesn't just hurt your reputation or your ego or your pride.
It's not just a private personal offense, but it publicly puts a scarlet letter A etched into your very flesh that will follow you the rest of your life to where you'll struggle to feed your own children.
When they come to you in that manner, Jesus does not.
Advocate for turning the other cheek.
That is not what's being said here.
You can still pray for your enemies when they do things like this and love those who persecute you, even in these instances, but you also cannot turn the other cheek and instead you can present a defense and exonerate yourself so that you can protect yourself and those that you're responsible for protecting and providing for.
So, let me give you another quote.
From Matthew Henry, he says this We must not be revengeful, I say unto you, that ye resist not evil.
It's the words of Jesus.
The evil person that is injurious to you.
And yet, this does not repeal the law of self preservation or self defense.
And the care that we are to take of our families, we may avoid evil and may resist it so far as it is necessary to our own security.
But we must not render evil for evil.
We must not bear a grudge.
We must not avenge ourselves, nor study to be even with those who have treated us unkindly.
But we must go beyond them by forgiving them.
The law of retaliation must be made consistent.
It doesn't replace the two stand in concert with one another.
The law of retaliation must be made consistent with the law of love.
So, what Matthew Henry is saying and commentating on these words is he's saying when Jesus tells you to turn the other cheek or to go the extra mile or to give your cloak as well as your tunic, Jesus is not telling you that you can't defend your family.
What happens if a burglar comes to your home and he's armed and he says, Give me everything you got?
Everything of value.
Well, if your own strand, you would look at Matthew 5, and you would pick out with, let's see, verse 42 give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
And then you would look your children in the eyes the next morning at breakfast as you sit at an empty table and say, We're going to starve now.
And I make no apology, I was simply obeying the words of Christ.
Evangelicalism has to be able to do better than this, guys.
We cannot be this stupid.
Surely.
I think we are, actually, sadly, but please tell me it's not true.
Tell me that that is not the state of the church, that that's not the state of the pulpits, that not the state of our seminaries, our theological professors, our pastors.
Surely, surely we're not this ignorant.
That when Jesus says, don't refuse the one who asks from you, that all of a sudden that means that if somebody pulls a gun as I'm going on a wife, Or a walk with my wife and says, Give me your watch and give me her purse that I can't do anything about it.
That even after they're gone and the threat is now removed, at least the physical threat, and I've been robbed, that I can't even call the police and report a crime because they demanded of me and I gave to the one who asked.
That's not what Jesus is saying.
But convincing Western nations that that was what Jesus was saying is how you get a Muslim invasion.
That's how it happened.
Pietistic, shallow interpretations of the Word of God by ministers, then crudgeled to politicians, and the lines and categories blurred to where there's now one application and one interpretation for everything in the Bible.
Eisegesis, reading into text things that aren't there, and then taking them like fortune cookies, stripping them out of the larger context and a whole biblical theology, and now the West has fallen.
And by God's grace, maybe it could eventually be rebuilt.
But not until we learn a thing or two.
Not until we learn a thing or two.
So, if you have a relationship, a friendship, the words of Jesus, they mean something.
So, we can't just say it means nothing.
It does mean something.
You have a relationship, you have a friendship, you have a co worker, you have this, you have that, and they personally insult you.
Don't try to get justice.
Turn the other cheek.
Let your ego be bruised.
Get over it.
If you can, overlook an offense.
It is the glory of a man to overlook an offense.
Let it go.
If you can, let love cover a multitude of sins.
And that's how we deal with personal, private enemies and love them and pray for them.
That's what Jesus is talking about.
But if it's a public enemy, it's an entity, it's a group, they're trying to ruin your livelihood, not just bruise your ego, but where if their accusations are true, everyone will abandon you, you'll lose your job, your business will be sued out of existence,
and it's actually a lie, and that's key, it has to actually be a lie.
You have to actually be innocent.
And then you're sitting on something that could exonerate you and prove that these accusations are, in fact, slander.
Turn the other cheek in that case does not apply.
Release the Kraken.
Okay.
We have to understand categories public versus private enemies.
When to have mercy, when it has to do with my own ego being offended.
And then, when to actually have still mercy, but on your wife and children, who are the ones who ultimately will suffer if the opposition wins when you're actually innocent and have the ability to exonerate.
This doesn't just go with my personal situation.
I'm preaching it because it's the Word of God and applies to you also.
All of you have situations like this.
You need discernment to be able to distinguish between these categories.
Is this person hurting my feelings?
Are they a private personal enemy?
Let it go.
Is this person trying to crush my business and my livelihood?
Or are they holding a gun at my doorstep in the middle of the night, trying to physically hurt me or harm my family or rob us?
Turn the other cheek.
In those instances, does not apply.
Doesn't apply.
When Jesus says, You've heard it said, and he points to Moses, not the Jewish rabbis, but Moses, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, Jesus is not saying that proportional justice.
Properly carried out by the proper authority, the civil magistrate, that that's now off the table because now we just all have to be nice.
That's not what he's saying.
What he's saying is, I disagree with the Jewish rabbis who have perverted the law of Moses and said now private entities can be vigilantes and deal out their own justice, bypassing the state.
No, when it comes to private persons, especially his followers, let's be merciful if we can, especially if it's merely our ego on the line.